Antique French Boulle Mantle Clock c.1870

This is a beautiful antique French Boulle mantle clock, Circa 1870 in date with eight day movement striking on a bell.

The French movement is of high quality and bears the stamp of the clockmaker, the initials CJ & Co.

The clock bears an additional stamp which confirms that it was awarded a Medal for Excellence and Design at the Paris Great Exhibition.

Serial Number: 01262, 11270 and pendulum with number 11270.

The clock has a brass and enamel dial, with blue Roman numerals. The whole clock is inlaid with beautiful cut brass and tortoiseshell Boullework, scrolled ormolu mounts and it stands on scroll mounted feet.

Complete with the original sunburst pendulum, bell and key.

It keeps really good time and is delightful to look at.

Condition:

The clock has expertly been restored is in working order and the Boulle work is also in really excellent condition.

Dimensions in cm:

Height 41 x Width 23 x Depth 12

Dimensions in inches:

Height 16.1 x Width 9.1 x Depth 4.7
André-Charles Boulle (1642 – 1732), was the French cabinetmaker who is generally considered to be the preeminent artist in the field of marquetry. His fame in marquetry led to his name being given to a fashion of inlaying known as Boulle (or in 19th-century Britain, Buhl work).

Boulle appears to have been originally a painter, since the first payment to him by the crown of which there is any record (1669) specifies ouvrages de peinture. He was employed for many years at Versailles, where the mirrored walls, the floors of wood mosaic, the inlaid paneling and the marquetery furniture in the Cabinet du Dauphin were regarded as his most remarkable work. These rooms were long since dismantled and their contents dispersed, but Boulle's drawings for the work are in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

His royal commissions were numerous, as we learn both from the Comptes des B timents du Roi and from the correspondence of Louvois. Not only the most magnificent of French monarchs, but foreign princes and the great nobles and financiers of his own country crowded to him with commissions, and the mot of the abbé de Marolles, Boulle y lourne en ovale, has become a stock quotation in the literature of French cabinetmaking.

Ormolu (from French 'or moulu', signifying ground or pounded gold) is an 18th-century English term for applying finely ground, high-carat gold in a mercury amalgam to an object of bronze.The mercury is driven off in a kiln leaving behind a gold-coloured veneer known as 'gilt bronze'.

The manufacture of true ormolu employs a process known as mercury-gilding or fire-gilding, in which a solution of nitrate of mercury is applied to a piece of copper, brass, or bronze, followed by the application of an amalgam of gold and mercury. The item was then exposed to extreme heat until the mercury burned off and the gold remained, adhered to the metal object.

No true ormolu was produced in France after around 1830 because legislation had outlawed the use of mercury. Therefore, other techniques were used instead but nothing surpasses the original mercury-firing ormolu method for sheer beauty and richness of colour. Electroplating is the most common modern technique. Ormolu techniques are essentially the same as those used on silver, to produce silver-gilt (also known as vermeil).